The only scenario I can see where both R1a and R1b were Indo-European would be if they had remained in the same area until the copper age expansion.

Essentially, although he doesn't talk about Y DNA, that is David Anthony's scenario.

Indo-European is not a language but a family of languages. At some point Proto-Indo-European was a language. The last people/tribe who spoke PIE before the first split could have had a mix of haplogroups or it could have been so long ago it hardly matters.

I don't see why the whole concept of R1b1b2 spreading with IE languages of is problematic. At some point R1b1b2 was on the IE cultural train. It seems like it certainly brought IE to places like Iberia and the British Isles. Did it bring it to Gaul/France? The chances are good.

So when did R1b1b2 folks first speak the IE languages? Austria/Switzerland or back in the Balkans or in the Near East or in the Caucasus or in the Steppes?

I would guess somewhere in the Near East. Anatolian is an off-shoot of Proto-Indo-European, and R1b1b2 is oldest in the Near East.

I'd say it travelled north through the Caucasus (Maikop Culture?) where it encountered R1a1 nomads who learned the language through trade with the farmers. R1b1b2 probably took two routes into Europe: one north over the Black Sea, and the other via the Balkans.

The likely scenario is that several hg's were involved with the development and spread of IE. J2 and I could have a claim here as well. R1a is certainly important to a later Satem spread. If we take Colin Renfrew's theory of an Anatolian IE homeland, then R1b1b2 makes a very good fit. However, David Anthony makes a pretty solid argument against it.

With R1a and R1b clearly distinct in terms of geography, it leads me to believe they have a different history in time and place. Yet they have the common ancestor at R1, probably in the late Upper paleolithic. I think R1a split from an R1 somewhere in south-central Asia and later went north along the east coast of the Caspian after the Younger Dryas. There is a trail of archaeology from northern Iran to the Urals to support this at the right time. Then they became part of the Pontic Mesolithic foraging cultures, later Dnieper-Donets and maybe early Sredny-Stog. R1b may have split from an R1 further west and remained in SW Asia as agriculture was developing. Only speculating but R1b may have arrived through the Caucasus as early as Sredny-stog and probably no later than Maikop in order to be important to the development of early PIE/horse domestication. This puts R1b1b2 on the steppe only for a short time before they move into Europe as Yamnaya/Maikop. This might be why R1b is rare in Russia today.

Imo, this explains why these two hg's have an east/west distribution. Sure, there is overlap in places like central Europe and Balkans, but the overall pattern remains. Still, if r1b1b2 were orginally neolithic farmers or other old Europe types, and some probably were, why did they become so prolific compared to other hg's like E, J, and I? It just doesn't make sense with the archaeology of Anthony and others. The Maikop and Yamnaya scenario fits well to place R1b1b2 as the distributors of centum branches without a large R1a component dominating when you consider R1a primarily as foragers until the post-Yamnaya Satem branches.

Interesting thoughts. My issue is this - language divergence. Generally speaking the longer the physical separation of 2 groups the greater the divergence. As far as I am aware, the linguists have placed Proto-Info European (PIE) in the late Neolithic or copper Age.

Now, people often come out with ideas like the Satem-Centum split corresponding with the split in R1. However, the split in R1 was far older (can someone please post the various estimates?), If you put this together with the strange almost mirror image quality of the distribution of the 2 haplotypes today then there is a problem. If their separation in terms of geography on either side of the Black Sea is anywhere near as old as the split in lineages then only one could have spoken PIE.

My thinking is that in the copper age model, the only way they could both have spoken PIE is if the two haplogroups existed mixed together or very close together. I do not think they both could have been the original PIEs if like now their distributions around the Black Sea area were as different as they are now. It is possible too that the whole thing is very complex due to Nomadism. I wonder if the answer lies slightly further to the east towards central Asia etc where some of the peoples have R1a and R1b. Perhaps the split is due to founder effects, drift and other phenomenon from an originally mixed group as they headed in various directions.

One has to keep in mind that R1a is also a good deal older than the origin of PIE (unless most linguists have underestimated its age). Unless all of R1a hung together in the same area until the Copper Age, there cannot be a one-to-one correspondence between PIE and R1a.

I must say, however, that the weight of the ancient dna evidence, unless it has been contaminated or tampered with for nationalistic reasons (both are distinct possibilities), comes down on the side of R1a.

One thing seems fairly certain to me, though, and that is that R1a could not have spread Indo-European to Western Europe, not directly anyway. If PIE is to be attributed to R1a, then some sort of non-migration or very limited migration mechanism must have secured the language change.

And that is what is hard to believe. I think it just as likely that PIE was brought to Europe by the first farmers who then imparted it to the steppe pastoralists, who perhaps added the words for wheel, wagon, etc., to the vocabulary and spread those back into the original PIE-speaking zone.

A lot of the archaeology works for a steppe R1b1b2 trail into Europe, but not near as much on the genetic side. By this I mean the supposed spread of IE branches through steppe migrations, the overrunning of the SE farming communities, stratified societies, pottery changes, stelae, etc. Fast forward a few thousand years and we have derived Germanic and Celtic speakers all over central/western Europe.

The genetic trail though, lines up better with the spread of agriculture from SW Asia. I still don't think we can rule out a SE Europe neolithic entry for R1b1b2. With Lactose tolerance gene found in the Funnelbeaker remains and also the fact that a large percentage of Western Europeans can digest milk, the farming diffusion scenario has some weight. The Funnelbeaker people could have acquired that gene from the east through some early steppe intrusions, but the archaeology is not very clear on that.

Some of the questions I have is: If R1b1b2 was primarily a neolithic farming hg, then where were the other old Europe hg's at this time of acculturation from the steppe? Why did they not become as prolific? Or did they arrive much later in the Bronze age?

With Lactose tolerance gene found in the Funnelbeaker remains and also the fact that a large percentage of Western Europeans can digest milk, the farming diffusion scenario has some weight.

The problem with this idea is that dairy farming did not spread with the Neolithic - or at least not the early Neolithic. So it is not surprising that the gene for lactose tolerance was not found in remains of LBK farmers, but in the much later Funnel Beaker remains. See 1) Near Eastern Neolithic: Dairy farming2) The Indo-European family: Secondary products revolution and Funnel Beaker Culture. 3) Indo-European genetics: Lactase persistence - T-13910

The problem with the whole copper age theory is it takes a lot of special pleading to explain IE language in most of western Europe. It takes a lot of leaps of faith and has a lot of missing links. In some ways it is extremely non-intuitive and seems contrary to Occam's Razor to me. For me, if the attempt to link beakers with eastern European cultures ultimately does not succeed then it will be practically impossible to accept a copper age date for the spread into the west. I am still on the fence about this because I see many intuitive advantages in the early Neolithic model and I do not feel that the evidence against that model are fatal. Both models have problems and neither can be said to look like the run away winner at present IMO.

Alan - you are entitled to your views, but let me remind you of a couple of things.

1) Renfrew's theory of the spread of IE with the Neolithic is a dead duck. Even he recognised this years ago. The linguist evidence doesn't fit. Plus there is a clear archaeological trail from north of the Black Sea. He changed his stance to a double-wave, in which Pre-IE spread in the Neolithic from Anatolia, including to north of the Black Sea, then IE spread from the latter region in the Copper/Bronze Age, as in the opposing theory.

2) This double-wave idea is now dead as well, because of evidence from cultivars that the Neolithic spread over Europe from the Levant via Cyprus and Crete. Anatolia was not involved at all until the late Neolithic. This discovery also puts paid to the Balaresque interpretation of the spread of R1b1b2.

The distribution of R1b1b2 in the current population made it look very convincing, but it's a non-starter.

Alan - you are entitled to your views, but let me remind you of a couple of things.

1) Renfrew's theory of the spread of IE with the Neolithic is a dead duck. Even he recognised this years ago. The linguist evidence doesn't fit. Plus there is a clear archaeological trail from north of the Black Sea. He changed his stance to a double-wave, in which Pre-IE spread in the Neolithic from Anatolia, including to north of the Black Sea, then IE spread from the latter region in the Copper/Bronze Age, as in the opposing theory.

I'm not sure prehistoric languages have an archaeological trail without some interpretation. One has to first say, "This language was spoken here, by this people" before he can then identify the pots and other stuff they left behind as "Indo-European" or whatever.

2) This double-wave idea is now dead as well, because of evidence from cultivars that the Neolithic spread over Europe from the Levant via Cyprus and Crete. Anatolia was not involved at all until the late Neolithic. This discovery also puts paid to the Balaresque interpretation of the spread of R1b1b2.

The distribution of R1b1b2 in the current population made it look very convincing, but it's a non-starter.

I'm not sure the cultivar discovery knocks out Balaresque et al, Jean. It just alters the route some. R1b1b2 is still oldest in the Near East and gets progressively younger as one moves from SE to NW in Europe.

So some of the chief cultivars came by way of Cyprus and Crete instead of right across the Hellespont. That works for R1b1b2, just as well. Just look at Vince's R1b1b2 diversity map:

I would also argue that crops aren't people. The people could have come from Anatolia and acquired cultivars, perhaps newer and better, improved cultivars, by way of Cyprus and/or Crete. The fact that the cultivars came from one place (not too far removed from Anatolia, by the way) doesn't mean the people couldn't have come from another.

I'm not sure prehistoric languages have an archaeological trail without some interpretation.

You are absolutely right. If it was easy, it would all have been sorted out centuries aqo. The trail in question works two ways.

1) backwards in time from the people known to speak IE languages. 2) forwards in time from the region/period deduced to be the IE homeland on linguistic grounds, but also by chain of deduction from 1.

A lot of very complex reasoning has gone into this. If it took Mallory and Anthony entire books to explain it, I'm not going to try it in one forum post. But the archaeological trail eastwards from the PC steppe to Andronovo is clear, and from there to Iranian-speaking Scythians we have a clear trail of aDNA. That of course is the relatively easy bit - R1a1a. Yet it places the IE homeland on the steppe north of the Black Sea as predicted.

I'm not sure the cultivar discovery knocks out Balaresque et al, Jean. It just alters the route

The crux of the argument by Balaresque et al is that the Neolithic spread from Anatolia and lo and behold! - R1b1b2 seems to spread from Anatolia! So it must be Neolithic.

The idea that the Neolithic spread to Europe from Anatolia has been so unquestioned for so long, that inevitably there will be resistance to the discovery that it didn't. But the evidence from cultivars just fits the wider picture. No early neolithic sites have been found in Western Anatolia. Perles went into print before the study of cultivars, pointing out that the Neolithic in Greece didn't seem to have sprung from Anatolia.

of David Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World

Quote

David Anthony's volume is the most ambitious in the group as it sets out to link archaeology and language in the formation of the Indo-European languages. The question is: has the problem of the origins and spread of Indo-European languages now finally been solved? I am tempted to answer in the affirmative, though others may disagree. It is certainly the most authoritative attempt to provide ah answer since the seminal debate started in 1987 with Renfrew's provocative book Archaeology and language: the puzzle of Indo-European origins, followed in 1989 by its antithesis, Mallory's In search of the Indo-Europeans: language, archaeology and myth. Since then the debate has raged, and in recent years Colin Renfrew has brought genetics into play, without, however convincing the Indo-Europeanists that the spread of farming and early Indo-European languages belong together. Those who want to dip a little deeper into the history of language can also consult Mallory and Adams's 2006 handbook The Oxford introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. However, it is the impressive archaeological discoveries made by Russian archaeologists, sometimes working with colleagues from abroad, over the last 25 years that have produced most of the new evidence behind David Anthony's book. Anthony masterfully synthesises this wealth of new material--in seventeen chapters, 470 pages of text and 80 pages of notes, a good index and a full bibliography--in an accessible language, supported by good illustrations. In the first chapters the author outlines the history of research and provides a good overview of the most essential linguistic questions: the questions of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European, and the proposed age of the separations of the various branches--Indo-Iranian, Hittite (possibly the oldest), Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, etc. He then puts forward a new theoretical model of language change based upon social dominance and the establishment of patron-client relationships between mobile immigrants on horseback and sedentary local villagers, soon leading to the abandonment of village life and the further expansion of a mobile agro-pastoral economy. In subsequent chapters Anthony traces these early agro-pastoralists in the Pontic-Caucasian steppe region, from their earliest beginnings to the full expansion of this particular social and economic organisation, first westwards during the third millennium, and then eastwards, mainly during the late third and early second millennium BC. His presentation makes clear why and how this social formation and language succeeded, thanks to a specific historical combination of environmental and economic conditions which favoured its expansion.

Anthony's richly textured book offers the reader a fascinating historical reconstruction, but it can also be used for answering specific questions, such as the origins of horse riding. The book also provides references to possible correspondences between the reconstructed Indo-European speaking societies based on archaeology, and the reconstructed Indo-European social organisation and its political/religious institutions based on texts. Such parallels are most compelling in the case of the Sintashta culture, a warrior society south east of the Urals dating to the early centuries of the second millennium BC. Its members employed the earliest two-wheeled war chariots, their chiefs were buried with chariot and horses, and they lived in highly organised, fortified settlements. Here one finds the closest archaeological parallel to the Aryan society described in the earliest Indian Rig Veda, a collection of songs and rituals from the mid second millennium BC. For further reading on this subject one can also refer to Kristiansen and Larsson's 2005 The rise of Bronze Age society: travels, transmissions and transformations.

In its integration of language and archaeology, this book represents an outstanding synthesis of what today can be known with some certainty about the origin and early history of the Indo-European languages. In my view, it supersedes all previous attempts on the subject.

An archaeological site in southeastern Europe has shown its metal. This ancient settlement contains the oldest securely dated evidence of copper making, from 7,000 years ago, and suggests that copper smelting may been invented in separate parts of Asia and Europe at that time rather than spreading from a single source.

The find extends the known record of copper smelting by about 500 years, an archaeological team headed by Miljana Radivojević and Thilo Rehren of University College London reports in an upcoming Journal of Archaeological Science.

If we suppose that R1b1b2 was among the early PIE speakers, wouldn't R1b1b2 have to be present at the time of the Sredny-stog culture in order to evolve into Yamnaya? If I remember correctly, the Sredny-stog people may have more antecedents to the southern Urals/middle Volga and not necessarily the south where we would expect R1b.

If R1b1b2 comes from SW Asia through the Caucasus during the Maikop period, wouldn't they carry a strong Afro-Asiatic or Kartevelian language element to the steppe? Do proto-Germanic or Italo-Celtic have cognates or anything from SW Asia/Caucasus? I'm not very familiar at all with linguistics, I just wanted to throw this out here.

I'm not sure the cultivar discovery knocks out Balaresque et al, Jean. It just alters the route

The crux of the argument by Balaresque et al is that the Neolithic spread from Anatolia and lo and behold! - R1b1b2 seems to spread from Anatolia! So it must be Neolithic.

The idea that the Neolithic spread to Europe from Anatolia has been so unquestioned for so long, that inevitably there will be resistance to the discovery that it didn't. But the evidence from cultivars just fits the wider picture. No early neolithic sites have been found in Western Anatolia. Perles went into print before the study of cultivars, pointing out that the Neolithic in Greece didn't seem to have sprung from Anatolia.

I don't see how any of that makes much of a difference with regard to R1b1b2 and a possible Neolithic connection. It's not like it represents a seismic geographic shift. I mean, look at where Cyprus and Crete are relative to Anatolia. Besides, I don't think anyone has said, "It's Anatolia for R1b1b2 or nothing!" R1b1b2 could have arisen anywhere in SW Asia, and it could have taken any number of paths into Europe.

Shifting the route into Europe from across the Hellespont to island hopping across the Aegean via Cyprus and Crete doesn't seem that much of an alteration to me. In other words, it's not a deal breaker.

I am not attemtping to argue some hard-and-fast position. I'm just saying that I don't think the fact (for the present, anyway) that the Neolithic cultivars seem to have come from the Levant by way of Cyprus and Crete does much harm to Balaresque et al.

I'm not sure the cultivar discovery knocks out Balaresque et al, Jean. It just alters the route

The crux of the argument by Balaresque et al is that the Neolithic spread from Anatolia and lo and behold! - R1b1b2 seems to spread from Anatolia! So it must be Neolithic.

The idea that the Neolithic spread to Europe from Anatolia has been so unquestioned for so long, that inevitably there will be resistance to the discovery that it didn't. But the evidence from cultivars just fits the wider picture. No early neolithic sites have been found in Western Anatolia. Perles went into print before the study of cultivars, pointing out that the Neolithic in Greece didn't seem to have sprung from Anatolia.

I don't see how any of that makes much of a difference with regard to R1b1b2 and a possible Neolithic connection. It's not like it represents a seismic geographic shift. I mean, look at where Cyprus and Crete are relative to Anatolia. Besides, I don't think anyone has said, "It's Anatolia for R1b1b2 or nothing!" R1b1b2 could have arisen anywhere in SW Asia, and it could have taken any number of paths into Europe.

Shifting the route into Europe from across the Hellespont to island hopping across the Aegean via Cyprus and Crete doesn't seem that much of an alteration to me. In other words, it's not a deal breaker.

I am not attemtping to argue some hard-and-fast position. I'm just saying that I don't think the fact (for the present, anyway) that the Neolithic cultivars seem to have come from the Levant by way of Cyprus and Crete does much harm to Balaresque et al.

I just wanted to stress that I am not arguing for a Neolithic entry for R1b1b2 into Europe, but I am not arguing against it either. I certainly don't think R1b1b2 was anywhere near Iberia or anywhere else during the last Ice Age.

I was one of the first (that I know of) to argue for a centum Indo-European connection for R1b1b2, and I still think that makes sense, but I keep waiting for some solid proof. Meanwhile, all we seem to be getting are R1a results, mostly from way out east where, perhaps, we shouldn't expect anything else. Of course, there was that one Corded Ware site in eastern Germany, but it likewise produced an R1a result (for a single family pair, father and son, as I recall).

But I also must say that the Neolithic expansion sure is a lot more impressive than what came out of the steppes. It seems more fundamental and earth-shaking, and surely such a sea change as the switch to Indo-European must have been facilitated by something as tremendous?

Jean I found this recent news story on ancient copper use. I thought it might be of interest to you.

Thanks. I can't get the page to load, but I've found a blog post on it. Looks like the write-up in Journal of Archaeological Science of a site that hit the headlines last year. I had a reference to it in P of E for a while, but it got cut in a re-write. Pločnik, if I recall rightly.

If we suppose that R1b1b2 was among the early PIE speakers, wouldn't R1b1b2 have to be present at the time of the Sredny-stog culture in order to evolve into Yamnaya? If I remember correctly, the Sredny-stog people may have more antecedents to the southern Urals/middle Volga and not necessarily the south where we would expect R1b.

If R1b1b2 comes from SW Asia through the Caucasus during the Maikop period, wouldn't they carry a strong Afro-Asiatic or Kartevelian language element to the steppe? Do proto-Germanic or Italo-Celtic have cognates or anything from SW Asia/Caucasus? I'm not very familiar at all with linguistics, I just wanted to throw this out here.

According to Johanna Nichols, the language family from which PIE borrowed most was Kartvelian. There are a few borrowings from Afro-Asiatic e.g. the word for bull, which probably arrived along with herding.

However we not only have to explain how R1b1b2 arrived on the steppe in time to get caught up in the IE sweep through Yamnaya, we also have to explain how it ends up in Iberia evenly spread through peoples speaking at least three different languages, only one of which is IE. (The others being Iberian and Basque, though the latter was more in France originally.)

I am currently leaning towards the view that some R1b1b2 filtered into the steppe at least by the start of the Maikop culture c. 3800 BC. The Kemi Oba Culture looks the most likely candidate - heavily influenced by Maikop, but part of the Yamnaya Horizon. So picture them as the IE speakers. They are the ones who conveniently leave a trail of stelae along their route to Italy and Iberia, where they seem associated with what became the Celtic-speaking area.

If the Maikop Culture continued to speak its own language, then we can see how closely-related R1b1b2 people could end up in the same migration as the Stelae People when the Maikop Culture crumbled, but take a non-IE language to Iberia. See my page on the Basques for details.

Jean I found this recent news story on ancient copper use. I thought it might be of interest to you.

Thanks. I can't get the page to load, but I've found a blog post on it. Looks like the write-up in Journal of Archaeological Science of a site that hit the headlines last year. I had a reference to it in P of E for a while, but it got cut in a re-write. Pločnik, if I recall rightly.

Got the Journal of Archaeological Science paper. The site is Belovode. Thanks again!

I'm not sure the cultivar discovery knocks out Balaresque et al, Jean. It just alters the route

The crux of the argument by Balaresque et al is that the Neolithic spread from Anatolia and lo and behold! - R1b1b2 seems to spread from Anatolia! So it must be Neolithic.

The idea that the Neolithic spread to Europe from Anatolia has been so unquestioned for so long, that inevitably there will be resistance to the discovery that it didn't. But the evidence from cultivars just fits the wider picture. No early neolithic sites have been found in Western Anatolia. Perles went into print before the study of cultivars, pointing out that the Neolithic in Greece didn't seem to have sprung from Anatolia.

I think there were a few oddities and I think this study does indicate the need for further research but I am not convinced it can be taken as gospel in its entirety. Personally I never felt that the Anatolian route was relevant to Greece and perhaps the Cardial culture and some Balkans cultures anyway. I had thought that there was a dual route from the Levant via the sea and from Turkey into Bulgaria then the Danube. Recent studies looking at dairying through traces on early Neolithic pots indicated (through RC dates) that crucial aspects of dairying emerged among early farmers in NW Turkey and first spread with the initial spread of farming to Bulgaria and then along the Danube into the LBK zone. In doing so it bypassed Greece etc. So, some archaeologists in recent studies do present evidence for an Anatolian to the Lower Danube route in the spread of farming. Another thing I would note is that around the north Adriatic, the Cardial and LBK cultures have a brief point of relative proximity (Slovenia, Croatia, Austria etc) and I feel this could have led to exchange of ideas including cultivars etc which may mess up any inferences on human movement based on cultivars.

I'm not sure the cultivar discovery knocks out Balaresque et al, Jean. It just alters the route

The crux of the argument by Balaresque et al is that the Neolithic spread from Anatolia and lo and behold! - R1b1b2 seems to spread from Anatolia! So it must be Neolithic.

The idea that the Neolithic spread to Europe from Anatolia has been so unquestioned for so long, that inevitably there will be resistance to the discovery that it didn't. But the evidence from cultivars just fits the wider picture. No early neolithic sites have been found in Western Anatolia. Perles went into print before the study of cultivars, pointing out that the Neolithic in Greece didn't seem to have sprung from Anatolia.

I think there were a few oddities and I think this study does indicate the need for further research but I am not convinced it can be taken as gospel in its entirety. Personally I never felt that the Anatolian route was relevant to Greece and perhaps the Cardial culture and some Balkans cultures anyway. I had thought that there was a dual route from the Levant via the sea and from Turkey into Bulgaria then the Danube. Recent studies looking at dairying through traces on early Neolithic pots indicated (through RC dates) that crucial aspects of dairying emerged among early farmers in NW Turkey and first spread with the initial spread of farming to Bulgaria and then along the Danube into the LBK zone. In doing so it bypassed Greece etc. So, some archaeologists in recent studies do present evidence for an Anatolian to the Lower Danube route in the spread of farming. Another thing I would note is that around the north Adriatic, the Cardial and LBK cultures have a brief point of relative proximity (Slovenia, Croatia, Austria etc) and I feel this could have led to exchange of ideas including cultivars etc which may mess up any inferences on human movement based on cultivars.

The problem I have with the Cardial and LBK Neolithic cultures is their completely different routes should have led to more differences between R1b1b2 (R-M269) peoples. Where are the two differentiated branches of R-M269? This mis-alignment with R1b1b2 and the slightly off TMRCA timing always has me on the edge of ruling out the two great Neolithic expansions as carriers of R1b1b2 (at least in my mind.)

The only possibility I see of a possible two branches are R-P312 varieties with the Cardial and R-U106 varieties with LBK. However, I still think things don't end up correctly in the British Isles (should be a lot more early U106.)

Just like I think we need to talk about R-L21 in context of its brothers and its parent, R-P312. I think the larger picture, the explosive (population growth) "package" was R-L11, parent to both R-P312 and R-U106. So that leads to another key ingredient which is also a difficult question .... What is the origin and path of R-U106?

From the discussion I've read, R-U106's origin is more wide open than R-P312's, but I can't help but being reminded that the R-U106 project administrators feel like R-U106 is of greatest diversity in Northeast Europe... i.e. Poland to Baltic. No strong evidence here, but the correlation with David Anthony's Proto-Germanic path seems a bit uncanny.

Are three westward paths possible for R-L11? 1) U106 north around the Carpathians and 2) P312 south and up the Danube and then also 3) P312 further south and along the Mediterranean? *

I guess route #3 could include Anatole's North African... although I have to ask if there is any R-L11 trail in North Africa? Has there been any deep clade testing there?

* Of course, there could be other haplogroups, e.i. I or J or E, included on some of these routes and a little bit of P312 could have gone with the U106 guys and vice versa.

I'm not sure prehistoric languages have an archaeological trail without some interpretation.

You are absolutely right. If it was easy, it would all have been sorted out centuries aqo. The trail in question works two ways.

1) backwards in time from the people known to speak IE languages. 2) forwards in time from the region/period deduced to be the IE homeland on linguistic grounds, but also by chain of deduction from 1.

A lot of very complex reasoning has gone into this. If it took Mallory and Anthony entire books to explain it, I'm not going to try it in one forum post. But the archaeological trail eastwards from the PC steppe to Andronovo is clear, and from there to Iranian-speaking Scythians we have a clear trail of aDNA. That of course is the relatively easy bit - R1a1a. Yet it places the IE homeland on the steppe north of the Black Sea as predicted.

Anyone still arguing is free to do so, but academia has moved on.

problem is academia at any point in time feels that way. I rarely feel confident that the latest ideas and studies are closer to the truth than the older one in archaeology. I think in archaeology you just do not know if an idea will survive until there has been enough years for detailed published rebuttals to test it. Give it another decade and the old idea could be back in fashion. That may sound very negative for an archaeologist to say but that is bitter experience of most of the great archaeological debates over the last few decades. Beakers are an extreme example of this with an almost ridiculous turnover and U-turns in terms of origin theories even in the last 20 years with various phases of new work leading to completely different conclusions and I have absolutely no confidence that the last word has been said on them (there are areas where RC testing is weak). In archaeology its like clothes fashions. Wait long enough and the old ideas will come back into fashion.